Turkish Deputy PM Accuses Western Allies of PKK ‘tolerance’

Turkey’s western allies are accused of reluctance towards fighting against PKK terrorist group

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister on Thursday criticized the country’s western allies of being reluctant to show support in the fight against the PKK terrorist organization, according to Anadolu Agency.

Speaking at the Anadolu Agency’s Editors’ Desk in Ankara, Nurettin Canikli said the PKK terrorist organization has “massacred civilians for many years”.

Canikli said Europe and Turkey’s other western allies have been reluctant towards showing support in the fight against PKK despite being aware of the atrocities committed by the group.

His comments come two days after the European Parliament in Brussels was accused of allowing a photo exhibition, organized by PKK sympathizers on July 12, which later sparked outrage in Turkey.

The exhibition features around 30 photographs showing PKK, PYD and YPG terrorists in northern Syria.

In one image, crowds carry a photograph of PKK’s leader Abdullah Ocalan, who was convicted of terrorism and treason in 1999 and is currently serving a life sentence.

“Europe and our other allies’ reluctance towards supporting our fight [against the PKK] is one of the important signals of a global project,” Canikli said.

He said the “global project” aims at dividing Turkey and reshaping the powers of the region. Canikli said Turkey’s struggle against terror was not finished, but that important progress had been made.

Turkey’s southeast has been the scene of significant military operations since December 2015, as the police and army seek to clear the PKK terrorist organization from urban areas.

The PKK – listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and EU – resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015.

Since then, nearly 600 security personnel, including troops, police officers, and village guards, have been martyred, and more than 5,000 PKK terrorists killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq.

Related Articles

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called, on Saturday, for conducting a full investigation into the killing of hundreds of civilians at the hands of the Egyptian police and army forces during the dispersal of Rabaa [ More … ]

A U.S.-sponsored draft resolution that for the first time would have condemned the militant Islamic group Hamas, which controls Gaza, failed to win the required two-thirds majority in the U.N. General Assembly. Before Thursday’s vote, [ More … ]

At least 300 people have died in a militant attack on a mosque in Egypt’s restive Sinai peninsula in one of the worst terrorist incidents the country has seen in recent years. On Friday, Egypt was [ More … ]